This is more than DRM because the gamer gets substantial benefits from the online connection. Two of the biggest are easy access to multiplayer games and increased protection from hacks. Neither could be provided without the online requirement—online-only means a large multiplayer population, and protecting the server code makes it difficult to hack.

Converting a cloud game to a single player game through reverse engineering is taking what the publisher hasn’t given you, and changing it to something else—with completely different benefits. It’s not fighting DRM. It’s taking what’s not yours.

Jerykk wrote on May 12, 2012, 03:23:The code for the bot AI is stored locally, not server-side.

Are you sure about that (for my example of bots in FPS games)? If you're playing on an online server with bots I don't think it would for some reason do the bot AI calculations on your machine... Doesn't really make sense when you consider that there are 10 other people playing on the server; it's not doing individual AI calculations on all of their machines is it? The bot makes decisions on the server and the server relays you position/action information to represent it on your own machine.